Michigan

It's no longer clear which team is better

Bob Ford of Philly.com gives 76er fans permission to wonder if their team just might be better than the Detroit Pistons.

April 26, Philly.com: All right, now you are allowed to wonder exactly what we have here.
Before last night, before the 76ers stunned and humiliated the Detroit Pistons in Game 3 of the opening round of the playoffs, the perception was pretty clear. It went like this: The Pistons, taking the Sixers somewhat lightly, lost the opening game in the final minute, then recovered to win the second game convincingly.

Whether the Sixers are the better team in the rest of the series - they need only to split the four remaining games to advance - is still to be determined. But, yes, you are allowed to wonder now.

This wasn't merely the case of a young, energetic team hanging around with a superior opponent. This looked like a young, energetic team sapping the determination out of a veteran team that perhaps has seen too many big games to muster the energy necessary for another postseason run. That will be determined as well, but it is certainly what it looked like.

There are a lot of Piston fans secretly wondering the same thing, could it be that the 76ers are just a better team?

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Ryan Fagan of SportingNews.com takes it a step further, going so far as calling the Pistons' performance 'putrid'.

April 26, Sportingnews.com: The Pistons, though, have never looked as lost as they did tonight in Philadelphia. The 76ers dominated Flip Saunders' team. Samuel Dalembert dominated the Pistons' frontcourt to the tune of 22 points, 16 rebounds and two blocks. Samuel Dalembert? Nice player. Shouldn't be a dominant playoff force, though.

Is it possible that the Pistons just aren't as good as we thought they were? They don't have that bounce in their step that they have had the past couple of postseasons. They don't have that fire in their eyes. They don't seem to have the will. Maybe it's not just mental, though. Maybe they no longer have the athletic ability to impose their will, regardless how much they want it to happen. Tayshaun Prince is the only starter under 30. That's really, really old in the NBA. Tonight, they looked old, slow and listless.

The Eastern Conference this season was an easy place to hide a team's fatal flaws. The Pistons won just enough games in convincing enough fashion to make folks believe that they could turn up their game high enough to win when it really counts. But let's be honest -- this team certainly isn't good enough to win the East, and right now, it doesn't look good enough to win a first-round series.

Being honest, the Pistons don't look like a team that can with the East right now, or even get past the 76ers in the first round. But if the Pistons hid their flaws by playing in the Eastern Conference and still won 59 games, how does that explain the 76ers having a record of 40-42?

April 26, Detroit Free Press: The turnovers began on their first offensive play, when Rasheed Wallace tried to thread a pass to Tayshaun Prince and it bobbled away.

They didn't stop piling up -- a season-high 25 of them -- until Game 3 of the Pistons' first-round series against the Philadelphia 76ers was long past decided...

"They imposed their will on how they wanted to play," Pistons coach Flip Saunders said. "They got into us. They had guys who made big shots. ... They played with a lot of emotion tonight, which we knew they would. We didn't handle the pressure very well."

Saunders placed a large share of the blame on himself. "I didn't put them in a situation where they felt comfortable to be successful," Saunders said. "I've got to do a better job, and they've got to do a better job. It's everybody. I'm not going to sit here in front of you guys or the team and say, 'Our guys didn't play well, they didn't do their job.' It's a combination of things."

There are so many choices for Piston fans to choose from, as far as the blame game goes. Which might point to the person who put this whole team, players and coaches, together in the first place.